


Your Circuit's Dead, There's Something Wrong

by DynamicDuo (XylB)



Category: Future State (comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Canon Divergence - DC Future State, Hopeful Ending, liberal interpretation of the power rings, moon's haunted, some horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29523411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/DynamicDuo
Summary: For all he knows, everyone's dead. Earth is a black hole of destruction, swallowing up his loved ones, his friends, hisfamily, but space is even more of a vast, empty,infiniteabyss. He can't even begin to search all of it.His ring pulses weakly with its dying light. The force field flickers.He wonders where the others were when their rings died. When their willpower ran out.He hopes they're safe.(A GL Future State reimagining where Hal never makes it to Oa. He crash-lands on a dusty, deserted moon, with no food, no water, and no way out. His ring is dead, and there's something...wrong with this planet.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Your Circuit's Dead, There's Something Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> This is an edit/mash-up of the last two stories in Future State Green Lantern #2! Reading is...not entirely necessary for context, but might help a great deal. 
> 
> In the comic, the central battery has died, the GLs are scattered, and Hal sets off on search for the rest of the GL Corps towards Oa. 
> 
> Title from "Space Oddity" by David Bowie!

He gets shot out of the stars somewhere in sector 2908. 

The missile tears up the side of his ship somewhere above this purple, swirling gaseous planet, nothing but air when he suddenly plummets towards it, straining against the force of gravity and orbit as flames lick up the wrenched metal opening, crackle and spark towards the amplifier. 

The Sinestro Corps don't pursue him. With anyone else, that direct hit would be the end, and nothing follows him into the abyss of purple that he plunges into nose-first, his eyes fixed on the ring wobbling in its amplifier field. Just enough, he just needs enough to get _through_ , just - 

The fire sparks and catches like embers on his machinery, melting paint and metal with equal prejudice, eating up the hole on his right side. Yelling is a waste of oxygen, but he can't help it, panic alarms ringing shrilly in his ears as the ring wobbles and shakes and threatens to blink completely out of the ship. The gas floods his ship, obscuring any blurry vision he had through the glass anyway. The glass cracks with the force of the heat. 

Hal grits his teeth and resists the urge to close his eyes. This isn't the end, this _can't_ be the end, he's survived worse - 

There's a picture on his dashboard, stuck up with pink chewed gum. Keli's face grins out at him, big and bright and wide, Hal's hands on her shoulders, Kyle kneeling to match her height, a goofy grin on his face. John and Guy on one side of Hal, Jessica and Simon on the other. In uniform, but far from professional, and smiling carefree with the innocence of the past. 

Hal adjusts his grip on the controls and pushes the ship as far as it'll go, the engine thrumming violent under the soles of his feet, rattling against his back. There's no shock absorption in this little rickety number, but hey, he's flown worse. The Javelin was never built for comfort - and hey, neither was the F-150 when Carol first let him test it, because _boy_ did that leave him bruised - 

Metal squeals, and another section of the ship peels off - the entire frame _judders_ , almost enough to knock the ring out of its delicate hovering. Suddenly, a sharp burst of pain resounds through Hal's entire left side, and when the ship _veers_ again, sharply downwards, Hal feels a pulse of fear beat through his struggling heart, throbbing in time with his injured side. The ship throws him to the side a few more times while he struggles to control it. 

The fire climbs closer to his engine block. The picture curls and cracks with the throbbing, heavy heat pervading the cockpit. The ring wobbles dangerously. Hal opens his mouth to recall it and ends up coughing, choking, gas flooding his mouth, his throat, down into his lungs and scorching over his heart. 

He punches through the other side of the planet. The gas dissipates instantly, but he can still feel it clawing in his lungs, harsh and unbreathable, but he _did_ it, he missed the core, he missed - 

The new orbit pulls him in so violently he screams. The ship pitches sideways, a sickening lurch in his stomach when some force out of his control yanks it into a roll. With no chance to steady it, the ship descends into a tight, dizzying spiral, some sort of screwed up asteroid with fire licking up the sides and burning hotter with every second. 

Trying to control the ship is a losing battle. 

Hal recalls the ring and braces himself for impact, lacing his hands over his neck and trying to summon even the weakest forcefield to try and protect his vitals. 

The tears are mostly involuntary, and mostly frustration, and he was so goddamn _close_ to Oa, so close to finding the Corps, so close to finding out what _happened_. 

For all he knows, everyone's dead. Earth is a black hole of destruction, swallowing up his loved ones, his friends, his _family_ , but space is even more of a vast, empty, _infinite_ abyss. He can't even begin to search all of it. 

His ring pulses weakly with its dying light. The force field flickers. 

He wonders where the others were when their rings died. When their willpower ran out. 

He hopes they're safe. 

The impact jolts him hard enough his knee rams up into his jaw, but he holds tight while the ship skids forward, the nose scraping deep into whatever surface he's crashed on. It jostles him around the cockpit, throwing him up against the cracking glass and the unforgiving metal walls, jams him against buttons and switches that bite into his skin like tiny, determined teeth. 

The ship slows to a halt. 

The force field switches off. The ring fades until it's nothing more than a hunk of green on his finger. 

The first thing he does is suck in a huge, shaking breath. The second is bite back the sob caught in his throat. 

_Everything_ hurts. His ribs twinge with every inhale. His head is ringing, _shouting_ , the panic alarms still sounding like klaxons behind his closed eyes. Sharp, tingling pain lances through his joints. A duller, broader agony paints over his back and sides. 

There's blood in his mouth. Careful prodding tells him it's a split lip, not an internal injury. When he unfolds himself, it's with a pained groan, but nothing feels _broken_. Miraculously, there's no shrapnel stabbing him, and no debris embedded into his exposed skin. 

"Thank you," he whispers to the ring. 

The photo is somehow intact. Cracked and curled and burnt at the edges, and Hal snatches it before climbing out of the wreck on unsteady legs. 

Then the spinning and the falling catch up to him in one dizzying streak and he doubles over, but he hasn't eaten for...he can't remember how long. The ring had kept him going. Still, it _hurts_ , stings where his body tries to cough up anything left inside him. He collapses to his knees to spit purple-stained bile onto the dusty ground, and tries to quash the worry about the unknown gas he just inhaled copious amounts of. 

Speaking of gas. The purple planet looms over him, distant but oppressive, casts a purple tinge to his sky. He glances at it for long enough to determine it must be letting off some sort of glow, because the planet he's on isn't dark, and he doesn't remember seeing a sun on his way into this system. 

He doesn't think about it for very long. His injuries are more pressing - his entire _situation_ is more pressing, right down to how the hell is he going to survive on what looks like a desert moon, and where the hell is he going to _go_. 

The ship holds nothing useful. He didn't _pack_ anything useful. 

Hal clutches his aching ribs and sits down by the wreck, leaning against fire-heated metal. The planet temperature is pleasant enough so far, and the air seems...breathable. His lungs aren't having any trouble with it, and if it _is_ slowly killing him, then it's being very slow about it indeed, and he'll likely die from dehydration first. 

Which would be a problem. It would be one he could think about if he could stop his pounding headache for more than a second at a time. 

It's hard to fight against his eyes closed, shock and stress and adrenaline fading away, exhaustion setting in to regulate his heartbeat while it tugs at his core, urging him to rest. 

"Have to stay awake," he murmurs to himself. Dries out his mouth, but might help keep him conscious. 

The horizon wavers. 

"Have to...stay...awake." Water. Food. Shelter. Surely there must be _something_ out here if the Sinestro Corps are covering it. 

"Have...to..." 

\-- 

When Hal wakes up, the sky is tinged red. Red-purple. Reddish purple? Light burgundy? Kyle would know. Kyle can recite the Pantone scale from memory. 

It's a pleasant sight, considering Hal thought he might _not_ wake up. He still has no way to pass time, but the state of his aches and pains tells him it's only been a few hours. His head feels clearer, although still weirdly...fuzzy on one side. Bulbous. Like something's pulsing in there, _Alien_ -style. 

He huffs out a chuckle on Guy's behalf. He'd appreciate the reference. 

With nothing else to do, Hal pushes himself up and sets to inspecting the wreckage. It's mostly junk, and horribly twisted up and scraped away where it crashed. As expected, the amplifier is mangled beyond all recognition. There's no way Hal can get it to work. 

He fashions a series of crude weapons and a belt out of scrap metal and his busted seatbelt. Might as well have a way to defend himself, and might as well have a knife. Hell, maybe he can dig his way to water. 

He doesn't try digging first. Instead, he gathers up debris to mark his path - Theseus will begrudge him the substitute. 

He stakes the ground to the left of the cockpit and starts heading...that direction. He doesn't know what signifies north or south, east or west, on here, so his best reference is just Left At The Crash. 

His uniform didn't fizzle out while he was sleeping - he doesn't know if it's intended a product of latent ring energy, or more as a parting gift. Either way, he treasures the extra protection and warmth, and tucks the photo into one of its pockets to keep it safe. 

And then Hal walks. He leaves a stake in the ground every ten steps, hums something ironic like _Don't Stop Believin'_ or _Stayin' Alive_ to himself, and tries not to let the hopelessness of the desert overtake him. 

\-- 

Countless hours later, the desert gives way to a tree line on the horizon. Hal perks up at the sight, although his feet drag heavy against the ground, aching and weary from his travel so far. His mouth and throat are as dry as - well, a _desert_ , and he's been steadily ignoring the gnawing feeling in his stomach alerting him to its emptiness. The dust he kicks up sticks behind his teeth like paste, salty and disgusting on his tongue. 

The trees edge closer each second by painful second, Hal's sore muscles screaming every time he bends to stab a marker into the ground. The sky is more red than purple now, so whatever side he's on is definitely rotating away from the purple planet and towards...something red. He's not sure he wants to know. 

Otherwise, the overall climate seems tolerable, but the whole planet feels... _off_. Oddly quiet, oddly still, oddly... _nothing_. 

When the trees come into focus, showing their dry, empty branches and gnarled trunks, Hal figures out what the feeling is. 

Dead. This whole planet feels _dead_. 

The trees are nothing but blackened husks when he reaches them, pausing at the threshold of desert and forest to examine them. Their branches curl up into empty red sky, but not even a leaf shivers on them. The forest is as silent as it is expansive, extending as far as the eye can see on either side. Not even a birdcall. 

Hesitation tastes a lot like fear. Cold. Metallic. It slithers down the back of his throat like Parallax's claws to settle heavy in his stomach. 

Hal glances at his dead ring. 

"It can't be worse than the desert, right?" He asks. He marks the ground and steps over the threshold. 

The sky turns black. Hal throws out a hand to find the nearest tree trunk, scrapes his palm against the peeling, blackened wood, and looks up. His eyes adjust enough to show him the faintest, _faintest_ trace of red, a glimpse of it through the thick blanket of branches above him, but he _swears_ they weren't that thick when he looked at them from outside - 

He steps backwards and hits a tree at his back. But he stepped in _forwards_ , and behind him was just the desert. 

A sneaking suspicion sinks in his gut like a stone. He swallows and glances over his shoulder to where the desert should be. 

Nothing but pitch-black forest greets him, with no hint of its end. 

A branch curls over his other shoulder, almost like fingers, but Hal's _sure_ he didn't move - 

He automatically shies away from it, and finds another tree pressed against his injured side, one that _definitely_ wasn't there before. Okay. Okay. It's fine. He's fine. His heart is beating like a rabbit's foot in his chest, and his breathing comes short, but there's no way trees can block _air_ , right? There's no way, and there's no way they're moving, surely - 

Something dry and wood-y drags across his cheek, almost like a caress. 

Hal bolts. 

\-- 

Hal's lost. He's _so_ lost. He tried to keep loosely moving forward, but the trees - the _trees_ jostled and pushed him and he _swears_ they keep moving but he can't _see_ it, never sees it happen, and still shrouded in thick, oppressive darkness that feels almost physical sometimes, when he trips over a root and lands on his palms and can't find the room for a shout inside of his mouth. 

It doesn't feel like fear, but it feels just as sickly, just as _haunted_ , weighing down his tongue and his lungs and his heart. He tries to summon a light in his ring, to no avail. Branches tear at his arms, his legs, curl around his ankles and his wrists and his _throat_ when he stopped to catch his breath - 

He's running out of time. He knows he is. The desert paste in his mouth has long been replaced with the freezing iron taste of the forest, with the thick darkness flooding his mouth like the gas from the other planet, making him heavy and slow and stupid with something he doesn't yet want to acknowledge is _panic_. 

His makeshift weapons are useless against the trees. Their bark seems impervious, impenetrable, also Hal can hear it crack and peel and fall apart with the rot and decay slithering through this entire forest. Roots tear from the ground behind him, a great big _rip_ of wood and dirt, and he doesn't stick around to find out if it's a falling tree or a _chasing_ tree. 

A branch slams into his stomach, downing him in one shot. He lays sprawled, winded, on the ground, roots and twigs digging painfully into his back as he struggles to coordinate his limbs. 

Something cold and splintery wraps around his ankle. 

"No!" He yells, trying to shake it loose - he props himself up on his hands to stand up, only for something to catch in his hair and force him back down. "No! _No_! Let go!" 

It's useless, begging, but shouting feels better than the darkness oozing down his throat and pooling in his stomach, better than the paralysing fear tripping through his heart in arhythm. He kicks out as hard as he can, flailing his arms to try and avoid the trees getting a grip - another _something_ climbs up his throat, his jaw, but it doesn't squeeze. It touches his lips, and he screams and wriggles and tries to _stop_ them. His rings lays as dead weight on his hand. 

Another branch loops over his legs to pin them. Another over his stomach. Another twisting up his wrist and tangling in his fingers. Another pressing cold and sure over his heart, seeping ice even through the uniform. The branches at his lips push in, violent and uncaring and agonising, push over his tongue and his teeth and his cheeks and make him gag when they push into his throat, his eyes wide at the intrusion. They feel like they want to claw him inside out, want to sink inside as far as they can and - and - and he doesn't know _what_ they want to do, but either way it's not good news. 

He shouts around them, muffled, and chokes on his own blood when it splits his lip open again. Scratchy branches squeeze into his oesophagus. Hal can't decide if the sensation of cold fingers around his heart is phantom or real. 

_Please, please_ , he begs wordlessly, soundlessly, to anything that'll listen. Squeezes his eyes shut and tries to tap into whatever connection he still has left with the ring, whatever - 

The ring stays dead. Hal focuses on the trees trapping him to the floor, on the branches slithering slow down his throat like they're searching for his _soul_. 

Like Parallax did. Like Parallax did, and then he made Hal murder his entire city, and no one could _do_ anything - 

The forest explodes in green. The branches on and in Hal immediately dissolve into dust, into air, and with the brief flash of light, he can see the trees crowded around him, hunched like vultures over his prone body. 

The light fades, but Hal already saw the faces in the trunks. Carved, wooden, like - like - 

The fingers of the branches, the chasing roots. 

Hal scrambles to his feet, winded and coughing, and starts running again, his ring cooling against his skin. 

He doesn't want to be one of the trees. 

\-- 

The forest is never-ending. Hal's still coughing up the phantom sensation of wood in his throat. Every time his fingers brush the ridges of a trunk, he shudders, remembering the faces. 

His ring hasn't made a peep since its outburst. It remains as silent as the grave on his finger - as cold, too, where the eternal ice and darkness of the forest seems to seep into everything it touches. 

He pushes forward. He's not a Lantern for nothing. The branches snag and catch at him, the roots shift and slither below his feet, but he _pushes on_. He snarls at the trunks that bump his sides, snaps the twigs that brush his face, hacks at them with his knife when they get too familiar. It doesn't stop them trying, doesn't stop them _reaching_ for him, embedding splinters in his palms, his arms, but fear is a great motivator for survival, and he's not dying in an anonymous forest of undead trees. 

He's _not_. He glances down at his ring and hopes for a spark, a flicker, anything to help guide him out. He hasn't seen the sky in hours, and with the trees shifting as they are, there's nothing to prove that they haven't fenced him into a circle. Abruptly, he misses the desert - something he never thought he'd miss, with the dust and the dry and the emptiness. 

He thumbs the photo in his pocket. The soft, distressed edges soothe the panic a little. Scattered as they were when the battery ran out, Hal has no idea where they are, but...but he hopes that they at least found each other. 

He hopes someone at least found Keli. Kid's too young for this gig, although insists she isn't - something Hal's heard plenty of times, usually from Roy - 

Roy. Hal frowns. It still stings, years on, and Keli reminds him so _much_ of a younger Roy it hurts sometimes. Bright, bubbly, _smart_ , and yet somehow not yet weighed down by the woes of the world, of the _universe_. 

It gets them all in the end, Hal knows. He'd watched the Titans grow up, watched them come together and fall apart, watched them stumble and crash. A selfish, desperate part of him hopes Keli was on Earth when the battery died, safe with her parents or at least the League. A bigger part of him curdles with the knowledge she was likely out in space with the rest of them. 

But maybe someone found her. If Hal had mobility, he knows he wouldn't _stop_ searching for her, and he can only trust the rest of them to follow the same instinct. 

The next time he touches a tree, he realises he can _see_ a faint outline of the face, and instantly recoils from it. The faint ring of green shimmers around his ring, burning fiercely in the middle. Almost like a beacon. 

"Holy shit," he says. "Holy shit - ring, power level?" 

"Zero point zero percent," the ring reports, which is - _impossible_ , for it to be on at zero, that's - 

A surge of fondness overcomes Hal when he touches the photo again, and the ring pulses in time. 

"Ring, send out a distress signal," he orders before he can distracted. He ducks under another threatening branch and jogs over the next slew of roots. "Immediate help needed." 

The ring hums in acknowledgement. It burns brighter, then _brighter_ , and abruptly shuts off, plunging Hal into confusing darkness once more. 

Except when his eyes adjust, he can still see a green glow. He blinks down at the ring, but it's dead and blank again - he glances up, and finds a pinpoint of green in the distance, shining towards him. 

He starts running. It could be straight into danger, it could be a trap, but it's a _familiar_ green, and it's - it could be no more than a hallucination, or a mirage, but he dares to hope, dares to believe it might be _something_. And if it is, if it's another Lantern, or at least a ring, then that's better than nothing, better than being on his own, and if it's _lit_ then it's _charged_ \- 

His ring pulses with light again, matching time with the hopeful skip of his heartbeat. Hal holds onto that optimism and weaves through the knot of trees, pushing back grasping claws and trip hazard roots to fight towards it. 

The light _does_ seem to be growing closer, desperate hope flooding his veins and making his ring shine brighter with each stride. The trees tangle thick in front of his face, wind and coil around his ankles, but he rips his feet free with ease, renewed by the spark of hope in his gut, fanning into a flame along with his ring the closer he gets. 

The spot grows into a patch, into an _area_ , and the trees hug tightly around him, desperate claws on his face, his arms, trying to pull him back into their trap - 

A branch smacks him in the face and digs sharp points into his cheek. Then it _scratches_ , sure and deliberate, and Hal cries out at the pain, shooting a hand up to pull the twig out, blood dripping down to his jaw. Another sinks into his thigh, his calves, the taste of desperation thick in the wind, a lukewarm thrum alongside the consuming cold. 

Desperate. Cold. _Lonely_. Hal shivers with the icy spike of realisation, and he looks on the faces with new horror as he bats away the branches trying to cut him up. They're _lonely_. 

He wonders how long they've been here. 

He wonders what they've been promised. Is it a trade? His soul for theirs? One victim for another? 

Do they need sacrifice? 

Hal glances at the surrounded forest, at the endless unseen miles and miles of it, thinks of the black band across the horizon when he first saw it, and he thinks he knows his answer. 

Selflessness is part of what defines the Green Lanterns. 

But this time, Hal's selfish enough to put himself first. The ring surges on his finger with another small burst of energy, like a small forcefield, an EMP, pushing the branches back a couple inches. Then it fades to its simmering green again, and Hal takes the opportunity to escape. 

He pushes forward past the wall, and then suddenly finds himself stumbling into a green-lit clearing, surprisingly _bright_. The sky is back to purple-red above him, and when he glances back at the forest, all he can see is dead trees once more and the space between them until it fades into distance. No faces. No movement. No _darkness_. 

There's a sound behind him. He whirls around to face it, hands raised - 

A mixture of relief and apprehension passes over Keli's face. _Keli_. 

"Mr. Jordan?" She asks, her voice tight. 

" _Keli_ ," Hal breathes, and immediately drops to a knee in front of her to pull her into a hug. She's stiff at first, but relaxes into it with a sniffle when Hal gently squeezes her, hiding his own damp eyes in the tangled curls of her hair. 

"Why - what are you doing here?" Keli asks. Hal pulls away from the embrace to look her in the eyes. She still clings to his arms, unwilling to let go, and if Hal's honest, he feels the same. He settles his hands on her slim shoulders - _too young_ , his mind tells him, and sours in his stomach. _Too young to get abandoned like this_. 

"I crashed here," he says. "How in the world did _you_ end up here?" 

Keli blinks. "I was assigned here." 

" _Assigned_?" Hal glances at the clearing, glowing faintly green through the leaves and the grass and even the clear, clean _water_. Keli's gauntlet is stuck in the ground in the middle. "Where are we?" 

"This is Mogo." 

Hal freezes. _Mogo_? Last time he saw Mogo, the planet looked - well, it looked a lot better than _this_. 

But he looks at the gauntlet in the ground, and the area of green, and the way the light pulses through the soft leaves, almost like a heartbeat. 

"What happened?" Hal asks quietly. Keli glances warily at the forest and gulps. 

"I don't know," she whispers. "Mogo just - lost power all of a sudden, and we couldn't - we were _stuck_ \- " she shakes her head and inhales sharply. "My gauntlet can power Mogo a little. It's not very strong, but - Mogo made this space for me, because there's - in the dark, there's - " 

"I know," Hal murmurs. "So, you and Mogo were assigned to...?" 

"Mogo was escorting me to Ms. Mullein. To examine my - gauntlet." 

Hal turns to the grass beside him. 

"Mogo?" He asks. "Mogo, it's Hal." 

"Mogo doesn't talk much," Keli says. "I think - I think Mogo's too weak. I don't know what _happened_ , Mogo just - went dark. " 

Hal sighs. He doesn't want to be the one to break this news to her. 

"We all lost power," he says, as calmly as he can. "The central battery is dead." 

Keli turns wide eyes on him, her fingers clutching at his arms just that bit tighter. 

" _Everyone_?" She whispers. 

"As far as we know." 

Keli goes silent for a long minute. Hal rubs her shoulders with his thumbs, trying to let her process the huge, incalculable loss that he's just reported to her. The entire Corps. Her mentors. 

"Are they okay?" She asks after that minute, quiet and small and trembling. "Where is everyone?" 

Hal's heart breaks clean in two. He can't stop the twist of his mouth when he answers, his throat thick with unshed emotion. 

"We don't know," he says. "You two are the only ones I've found so far." 

"The only ones?" 

Hal nods mutely. Keli's eyes well with tears, and Hal has just enough presence of mind to pull her in against his chest before she starts crying, grasping at the tatters of his uniform with desperation only a kid can convey. 

"I'm _scared_ ," she confesses between quiet sobs. "When Mogo went dark, there were - they _chased_ me, and I thought - I thought I was gonna - Mr. Jordan, I don't know what to _do_." 

And for once in his life, Hal doesn't know either. 

"I understand," he says, wrapping himself around Keli as if to protect her from the darkness of the surrounding forest. "They scare me, too." His ring surges with a brief burst of light, a sympathetic flicker. 

Keli stays buried in his chest for minutes that he doesn't count, until her sobs die down to hiccups, to shaky exhales. He rubs her back in steady circles and rests his cheek on her head, trying to ignore the blooming despair in his chest. 

"What are we gonna do?" Keli asks, wiping her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her wrist. 

"I don't know, kiddo," Hal sighs, glancing down at his dead ring - 

Or his _not_ so dead ring. It shines stronger now, spurred on by his instinctive sympathy for Keli's tears. And it's not the only emotion it's reacted to. 

Despite everything, Hal feels a grin tug up the side of his mouth. 

"But I might have an idea." 


End file.
